AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Who attacked him?” Koshka said without a trace of the easygoing woman I first met. “Talk.”
“Ealhswip—von Lemerch,” I spit out. “Don’t ask. She had disloyal priestesses with her. And von Mekeln.”
One of the men gave me a strange look before shrugging. Guess we had more pressing worries than a strange girl.
Kaz stared down the stairs. “Usually you don’t take corpses with you so they’re probably alive, but who can tell tonight?”
“The King is down there, so that’s where we go,” Koshka agreed.
Below, a song played, summoning me—it was Tal and not Tal. A mirror of what it could have been. What it once was. Independent. Holy. Dark.
No one else seemed to hear it.
Lumi met my eyes, and I felt the pull inside her. Something was happening.
I longed to rush down, throw myself into danger, and let it blanket my mind until there was only reacting. Before I died, it was what made me feel alive. That edge.
The pull grew, like a maw wanting to swallow me whole.
But others relied on me tonight.
I had asked them to come.
“If you go now, they’ll know we’re here.” I turned to Maksim and the crowns. The fractured one whispered, its tune too low to hear. If Morovara was right, it would be needed. “Can yourepair it?”
“This here.” His fingers hovered over a part where the sigils had been reduced to nothing more than a spiderweb of glass. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“We’ve no time.” Koshka turned to Kaz. “Lead the way. Kill on sight.”
“You cannot stop the dead,” Lumi said. “You should remember that.”
Murder shone from Koshka’s eyes. “Dying for my king is an honor.”
The pitch inside climbed. For Lumi, it was a wind ripping her apart. My molars ached from the tearing sound. Something was in pain.
Morovara had said we needed the glass crowns. I focused on it, trying to ignore the magic.
“I’ve seen the whole crown. I can describe it,” I said.
Maksim raised a brow. “In enough detail? After how long?”
Before our eyes, a crack on the male crown branched, the glass screaming as if in pain. They must be destroying the sigils on the Gate, like on the crowns, I realized. They were one.
Lumi flared. “The Spirits of Tal can feel the Gate again. They’re all coming here.”
“How much time do we have?” Koshka said, one foot on the stairs.
Lumi shook her head. Not enough.
“I, for one, don’t intend to die,” Kaz said as he followed Koshka down. “If you have another solution, hurry up. We’ll be the distraction.”
“Wait!” I called as they proved not everyone magically listened to me.
The music filled my ears.
I needed to run. Run away from Tal. Run and never stop. Or down to Dimitri and final death.
Ealhswip took the image of the crown from my mind and made a fake, but Maksim was right. I could not describe it. Could not summon the image.
